Overview

In May 1998, the US Congress invited the seven members of the L0pht to testify on the state of government computer security. Two years later, that same group rode the Dot-com bubble to create the preeminent security consultancy the industry has ever known, @stake. Along the way, they stood up against tech giants like Microsoft, Oracle, Novell and others to expose weaknesses in those companies' premiere products. Despite the L0pht's technical prowess, the group could not keep what they had built together as money and internal politics turned friend against friend. Look inside L0pht Heavy Industries, or simply The L0pht, one of the most influential hacker groups in history. From formation, to congressional testimony, to going legit and the aftermath that followed. Follow the hacker 'Space Rogue' as he takes you on a journey through the magical hacker scene of the 1990s.The L0pht hacker collective no longer exists, but its legacy lives on. L0pht set the standard for how the cyber security industry now releases vulnerability information. Famous hackers that were once L0pht members, Mudge, Weld Pond, Kingpin, Dildog, Space Rogue, and others have done even more impressive things in the following years. The hackers and consultants hired by @stake and indoctrinated into the L0pht way of thinking have now become giants in the industry. All the hackers who read security information off the L0pht's website, downloaded software from the Whacked Mac Archives, or watched the Hacker News Network and became inspired have changed the world more than the L0pht could have ever done alone. The L0pht's message of bringing security issues to light and getting them fixed still echoes throughout the industry and is more important today than ever. The L0pht's dire warning of an increasingly dependent culture on a fragile Internet made during their testimony twenty-five years ago still holds true. In fact, the Internet may be in even worse shape today. Is it too late to listen?

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Reviews

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I was somewhat familiar with much of the history and many of the players after thirty years of speaking at hacker and security conferences and writing think pieces about the same, so the trip for me through these pages was also a delight on that score alone. But you did not have to be there then to love this book-- How the Hackers Known as the L0pht Changed the World enables you to be there now. - Richard Thieme Author and DEFCON speaker Cris Thomas has done a great service to history with his clear-eyed autobiography covering the rise and legacy of the Boston-based hacker collective, the L0pht. This readable portrait of the American 1990s hacker scene covers a turbulent and exciting period when many hackers not only clamored for security but demonstrated how to achieve it. This book-complementary and corrective to existing accounts-is essential reading for those who care about the history of hacking and computer security. - Gabriella Coleman Author Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous Space Rogue: How the Hackers Known as L0pht Changed The World is a behind the scenes expose of how a group of Boston hackers came together in the 1990s as a team to bring the underground hacker ethos of information wants to be free and adversarial thinking to the nascent field of cybersecurity. Their hacker conference presentations, vulnerability reports, hacker tools, U.S. Senate testimony, and founding of an influential information security consultancy in 2000 shaped the practice of cybersecurity as we know it today. - Chris Wysopal (Weld Pond) Co-founder & CTO Veracode SPACE ROGUE is a nostalgic inside look at one of the cybersecurity world's most storied hacker groups. L0pht's warnings about the security of the early-modern internet were a prescient voice of reason on many of the same cybersecurity concerns we're still sadly facing over two decades later. As a bonus, Cris Thomas' engaging storytelling provides an intimate reminder of what many of us still consider the 'hacker mentality' and something that's not easily taught -- namely, figuring things out (and doing) for yourself, thinking innovatively, acting creatively, and having an internal passion to constantly learn new things. -Dr. Richard Forno Cybersecurity professor and longtime industry veteran

Author Information

With over two decades of experience, Space Rogue (Cris Thomas) has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and has been interviewed by Wired, CNBC and even MTV. He created the wildly popular websites the Whacked Mac Archives and Cyber Squirrel 1. He produced the weekly podcast SpiderLabs Radio, and the critically acclaimed weekly news video program the Hacker News Network. His writing has appeared in Network Computing, New Statesman, The Hill, and the Christian Science Monitor. He has spoken at security conferences such as Def Con, Blackhat, and Shmoocon. Space Rogue currently works as the Global Lead of Policy and Special Initiatives for the legendary IBM X-Force.

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